India Education Summit 2022 Highlights: ‘Ed-tech’s responsibility to make education accessible and affordable’

"Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching the four C's -- critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. More broadly, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasise general purpose life skills," said J Phillip, Chairman, XIME

Discussing on ' Road to employability', panelist Kirit Seth, CEO of IT-ITES Sector Skill Council, NASSCOM said, "We're seeing this demand coming up of IoT and digital skills becoming a horizontal so that's really what we will need to do. And the push is going to come to academic institutions. A total of 35% of the graduates are employable in the tech sector. But what do educational institutions need to do about that? They need to first and foremost look at how to improve the foundational skills and the core domain that they provide. Because it's only on top of that, that you can put all these skills and build upon it because you simply cannot do artificial intelligence if you don't understand maths or stats. You can't go into a factory and suddenly start applying IoT or AI when you don't understand mechanical engineering."

In the panel discussion on ‘Upskilling the skiller’, Shekhar Bhattacharjee, Founder and CEO, Dalham Learning said, “Teachers need to be more equipped with ed-tech platforms which give them unlimited access to information knowledge, modules, curriculum which already made plugin prop into the classroom. that they go in and operate more as a facilitator and a researcher. You can facilitate your research you can curate information, and rather than becoming the old model, which was about that Guru is on the top. Guru has to be on the top all the time, but you have to be a lifelong learner at the same time. It is important to train teachers on 21st century skills that focus on collaboration, problem solving, design thinking with each other.”

We have a few initiatives that were testing on 21st century skills on no tech, low tech and high tech. It's just not one way it's not just about access to education system, whereas can they get these opportunities and work around it? And we're also looking at really marginalised populations the need to contextualise support as well. The need of a tribal girl in Odisha is quite a bit different from a need of a young person with disability which is going to be different from a child living an institutional care or refugee population. These are categories of young people. so when we talk about digital education, we do the breadth and scale of it, but at the same time, we need to look at the type of thing that is needed And what are these intersections for various vulnerable groups. as well, based on the three categories I talked about enabling ecosystem. We are working with government will economy photo mechanic sector partners, the supply of the devices in activity, then working at the society level as wellple. 

In the panel discussion on ‘Professional aka problem solving thinkers’, Dhuwarakha Sriram, Chief, Generation Unlimited (YuWaah), UNICEF said that we really need to look at 21st century skills not as an external thing, but as part of the curriculum as part of every subject matter that goes.

“We strive to understand the aspirations of young people and their learning, leadership employment on entrepreneurial journeys and and then support them in terms of what's relevant for them. Are they really work with jobs that are not created for technology's not yet invented, or the problems not yet and we need to really equip them with these essential skills such as collaboration, problem solving, effective communication, decision making, financial literacy, as well as your curiosity, imagination, resilience and self regulation. As the second workplace is transformed, the skills required of its young people must also report This accentuates the need to invest in building the necessary 21st century skills and competences," she adds.

“We have to remove learning from our system and have to be more inclined towards project based learning more inclusive digital learning, and the teachers, students and the parents need to be comfortable. “We need to be multidisciplinary in our homes a bit less focused stereotype or a profile. Student choices are very, very important. We must think of them at the code, and then the assessment systems around that. We should be able to remove anxiousness on saying you score ones and you're in or out, and we should be able to develop our students in a way that they can follow passion. It's not about just saying it's actually working. Let let there be more choices rather than an engineer or a doctor,” Bani Dhawan, Head of Education, India and South Asia Google Cloud India said

"Although we are all considering technology to be front, right, or centre, in reality, technology is not the end goal. It is the teachers it's the humans and how we make them adapt to the world. So teacher training is not only going to be required in the future, but that was exactly the requirement before the pandemic started. Google classroom has been existing for a longer time so much downtime, Google meet was available for such a long time. But the question arose that if you could use the right partners, like the ones we have like Martha, and one of the trainers, who's partnered with Google, then obviously the adoption at school level becomes so easy. I'm so happy to see that adoption is happening and what we can do in a country like India.” Naman Jain, Director, Silverline Prestige School said.

Talking on 'Creating a hybrid world', all the panelists unanimously agreed that the hybrid mode of education is here to stay for many years in the future. 

Tim Oates, Director, Assessment Research and Development Cambridge Assessment (University of Cambridge said, “I think digital is here to stay. I've seen some remarkable schools that have integrated the use of hybrid mode, integrated these other technology into the pedagogy and didactic approaches.Digital is here to stay the form of hybrid working which we've seen in pandemic has been so varied, has been driven by so many different levels, some of them good, some of them very problematic, that I don't think we can simply say that what we did pandemic during pandemic is what we should be doing in the future. We have to quite critically review what's happening. Look at the outcomes, look at who's been included and excluded, what the achievement has been, and then make very deliberate decisions about what approach digitally supported approaches we're going to take forward into the future.”

In the panel discussion on ‘India and the Ed-tech growth story’, Teachmint’s CEO Mihir Gupta said that even even while we go global, and tackle the problem of this big software and product gap in the emerging markets, localization from a vernacular perspective remains very important. “For the adoption, what we'll see is just the platform being present in 20 plus Indian and international languages, has made this adoption very, very easy. And another aspect has been just it being mobile first which has been a gap in education technology largely is that software and technology has been varied keeping a developed market in mind. Traditionally, and especially in education software, the products haven't been built with a mobile first mindset. and that is what is radically different in how we are seeing the spread as of today in India and emerging markets,” he added. 

"Technology is the only way to bridge the gap between access and quality learning. The physical iniquities of access to education are far far more difficult to solve than the inequities that exist in the digital world. The sector has made so much progress in enabling better learning outcomes. And as technology continues to advance and its integration in education expands the scope to affect you change, if anything in one word, that scope is limited. The World Economic Forum estimates that 85 million jobs will be displaced, redefine into changing skills 50% of all existing employees are going to need some sort of urgent upside. Technology is the only way to do that," Divya Gokulnath said in her session. 

“We all know that educational quality directly affects individual earnings. For an economy, education can actually increase human capital in the labour force. This increases productivity and that actually leads to a higher equilibrium level of output. Each uneducated youth are much more unlikely to have a living wage for themselves, they always have. So it is this convergence of education of technology of innovation, which is a cornerstone to any growing economy and will play a part in nation building. It will prepare our future generations for the unseen jobs of an uncertain tomorrow. In fact, so many jobs of tomorrow are not even defined," Divya Gokulnath, Co-founder, BYJU’s in her standalone session on the role of education in enhancing human potential.

While talking on ‘Technology as core of education, knowledge and Learning’, upGrad Chairperson Ronnie Screvala said that education can be for profit but main take is solving problems at scale. whereas the particular institution brick and mortar will not be as good as edtech platforms in terms of scalability. 

“However, outcomes is very, very important. In any aspect of education, you're part of the government. And you know exactly, because without outcomes, or ROI there isn't really anything else. So I wouldn't endeavour the ed tech. It is everyone's responsibility to make whatever we're doing much more accessible, much more affordable. We need to also focus on outcomes rather than just the value,” he added  

Today, India Education Summit will have  Ronnie Screwvala, Chairperson and Co-founder, upGrad, a discussion on 'Technology as core of education, knowledge and learning'. Another major highlight of the day will be a special address by Divya Gokulnath, Co-founder, BYJU’s followed by a panel discussion on 'TIndia and the Ed-tech growth story'. 

To attend the India Education Summit 2022, one needs to register for it. You can get the registration link from the top right corner of indianexpress.com website or via indiaeducationsummit.in. One can also watch the live-streaming event at Indian Express's YouTube Channel. For insights, detailed analysis, and key takeaways, keep watching this space.

Welcome to the second day of the India Education Summit (IES) 2022! After the inaugural address from the Union Education Minister and in-depth discussions on the implementation of education, National Education Policy, among other key issues, today's theme is 'Education’s Digital Revolution'. Ronnie Screwvala, Chairperson and Co-founder, upGrad will be the first to join today at 10 am for a discussion on 'Technology as core of education, knowledge and learning. 

This was just day one of the two-day-summit. Join us tomorrow at 10 am. We have many sessions that include eminent personalities and leaders from all spheres of education domain who will talk about the education, teaching, learning, and employment opportunities throughout the sessions. 

To encourage students to pursue skill-based courses, we launched skill university in Delhi. However, the mindset towards these courses needs to change. It might take time, but the Delhi Skill University will help students as well as parents to change their ideology towards these courses and consider them at par with other professional degrees.

"After conducting tracing of students who did not conduct school in either online or offline classes brought back 1700 students back to schools. Most of the students belonged to margianilised families who either shifted back to their village in Covid or could not attend due to parents unawareness. There is still a large number of students who are untraceable and we will find them to bring back to schools," said Manish Sisodia